


Unconventional Driver

by blueskypenguin



Series: coexist [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueskypenguin/pseuds/blueskypenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He still can’t believe this is his life, sometimes. Three months ago he was just another high-performing agent in Q branch, heading up the cyber sub-division. He’s only thirty two for heaven’s sake, and yet he’s the second most protected member of MI6. It boggles the mind.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unconventional Driver

**Author's Note:**

> Set three months after Skyfall, and so three months after Beta Testing. I appear to have 'versed by accident.
> 
> Small references to Goldeneye and On His Majesty's Secret Service, with implied references to James/Alec and James/Tracy.

He was afforded the privilege of a regular driver to take him to and from headquarters, the same as the other heads of crucial departments and branches. Q often felt a curious kind of guilt for Jeremy, as more often than not Q spent the evening awake at his desk, guiding agents (sometimes 007) or dealing with various crises (usually 007); occasionally he pulled an all-nighter or three in a row dealing with both (always 007). However, when he actually needed to return home - home being the flat in a nondescript complex in North London he’d bought three months before his promotion, when it became clear to Q he’d not be leaving this job after all - Jeremy was always at the other end of the phone: _ready with a car when you are, sir_.

(There’s still a dissonance to his being called ‘sir’. It has yet to sit completely right on his shoulders, he feels. Time will certainly weather him to the honorific.)

The time now, however, is a positively bizarre six PM, and yet Jeremy displays none of the inevitable surprise that Q is in fact leaving MI6 anything before nine. He has a few minutes to pack up and rinse out his mug to place it in the dishwasher, which most certainly gives Q branch the prize for ‘most eclectic kitchenware’. None of the mugs match, each belonging to a different employee, and all of them are novelty. Q knows who each mug belongs to, but his is the most conspicuous.

It was a gift. He couldn’t bear to use another.

He shrugs on his coat, powers down his station and leaves to a few nods, a couple of ‘have a nice evening’s, and an approving nod from Tanner whom he passes in the hallway. 

Q takes the lift to the carpool and heads straight for his personal car, a standard Jaguar just like M’s.

He still can’t believe this is his life, sometimes. Three months ago he was just another high-performing agent in Q branch, heading up the cyber sub-division. He’s only thirty two for heaven’s sake, and yet he’s the second most protected member of MI6. It boggles the mind.

What also boggles the mind, but Q refuses to let himself pause, is that Jeremy is not the man in the driver’s seat; James Bond is.

Q opens the back door and slides into the seat. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of a double-oh driving me home?”

“I was bored,” replies Bond as he starts the engine and pulls smoothly out of the throng of black, government cars. “And Perry hardly minded.” A few turns are made in perfect silence until they pull out of the garage. Q had brought his tablet to read in the back of the car, knowing the journey would take far longer at six PM than it would normally at his more usual time after midnight; Q suspects his car ride is set to be more interesting than he’d assumed.

A bored double-oh; Q feels there should be some sort of special terror alert for such a situation. He’s been at the other end of the line when Bond has become bored in the field, and each time the body count increased by a factor of at least three. Instead of voicing that thought, Q picks another, meeting Bond’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I wasn’t aware you even knew where I lived, double-oh-seven.”

“Oh, I don’t,” admits Bond nonchalantly, and he turns his eyes back to the road. “You’ll have to direct me once we near Hendon.” 

Q tries very hard not to smile; Bond pulls the car onto Northumberland Avenue, towards Trafalgar Square. “Just head up the A5, and I’ll direct you.”

“Ah, now that is familiar.”

“My directing you, or,” Q glances out of the window, “the National Gallery? I should hope neither is particularly forgettable.” 

He knows he is unable to forget a single detail of that first meeting: the bench, the painting, the man. He’s still amazed they achieved a pleasant introduction, as he’d wanted, from what could have been an insulting turn of phrase. He’d done so on purpose of course; addressing the elephant in the room through metaphor. Tanner may have been the twat making a point with the meeting place, but Q had been the twat calling attention to it. It hadn’t been very subtle, nor had it been without risk of complete rejection and vitriol; yet it had worked, and Bond had met him eventually with a hard-earned witty retort.

In the present, Bond meets his eyes in the rear-view mirror once again and the twist of his mouth is a wicked smirk. “How could I forget our auspicious beginnings?”

Q hums, and turns to watch London crawl by the tinted window. It isn’t quite what he’d consider their beginning, or perhaps it depends on the context. There’s a part of him that sincerely considers a moment in his lab, a few days after their first face-to-face meeting, to be the true beginning.

At the very least, it marks the first time Bond returned a piece of equipment intact.

It also marked the moment he and Bond acknowledged a mutual attraction and made the wordless decision to ignore it. Q isn’t unfamiliar with self-denial, and has made many sacrifices to get to his position before hitting forty unlike his predecessors. Working alongside Bond, seeing but not touching, guiding but not taking; it’s easier for him than he suspects it is for Bond.

Or perhaps that’s conceited of him; Q isn’t unfamiliar with that either.

He is, dare he say it, intimately familiar with Bond in a professional setting. Protocol requires Q remain on hand constantly during any mission of his double-ohs, and usually that means he’s on-call when he’s not at his desk - he can go home, put his feet up and trust the minor events to his team. Should anything requiring seniority or his expertise, he can return to MI6 or consult by phone outside of standard hours. For double-oh-seven, however, Q finds more often than not that he wakes when Bond wakes, sleeps when Bond sleeps, and mutes the communications when Bond shags.

On-mission, the sound returns when Bond speaks Q’s name, and that system is working remarkably well, so far. It’s been three months, nineteen missions of varying severity and duration, and idle conversation over encrypted frequencies make up to majority of his and Bond’s interaction. 

This silence in Q’s car is practically comfortable, and it reigns for the mile or so, down the Mall (Union flag at full mast, of course) and round up to Marble Arch. Q watches the world go by and slowly switches off as much as he can and leaves his work behind.

As they hit Edgeware Road, he feels Bond’s eyes flicking from the rearview mirror to the road ahead with increasing frequency. “Something on your mind, double-oh-seven?” Q asks mildly.

“Nothing in particular. Why north London?”

“Why not north London?” He counters, but decides to elaborate. “Colindale is undergoing expansion, it isn’t unreasonable for someone of my age to own a modest flat in one of the newer complexes and it’s both close enough and removed enough from SIS to suit my liking.”

“Ah, so I wasn’t far off with my guess of Hendon,” Bond murmurs, but the car is otherwise quiet and soundproofed enough to make his voice as clear as day.

Q rolls his eyes, “While I am loathed to encourage your ego, Bond, yes; I’m not inclined to ask how you drew that conclusion but I do in fact live near Hendon. Just off Edgeware Road as you head down to Colindale tube, though we know how familiar you are with the underground.”

“Intimately,” replies his driver with a quirk of his eyebrow.

The only acknowledgement of Q’s amusement is the slightest twist at the corner of his mouth.

“I do have something of an ulterior motive for this journey,” admits Bond as they inch their way forward up the A5.

Q isn’t at all surprised, and he is sure to lay the sarcasm on thick, “Oh, really?”

Bond smiles briefly, but it’s wide and genuine; rare. “Hmm, shocking I know, but I couldn’t very well ask surrounded by your buzzing little minions.”

“I have graduate interns and exceptionally qualified staff,” Q points out in his blandest tone, “Not ’minions’, but do go on.” He’s intrigued, because he knows exactly what this conversation won’t be - it won’t be a proposition, it won’t address their working relationship or lack of a sexual one - and so his mind percolates rapidly over the varying issues Bond may choose to speak with him about outside of MI6’s surveillance.

Not that Q pretends this car isn’t surveilled, normally. He just makes a point of activating certain frequency jammers in his possession when he feels like it.

Q notices that Bond’s grip on the steering-wheel tightens. “I have no next of kin listed,” Bond starts. “When I was considered dead, everything was boxed up or sold off.”

“I heard,” is all Q says, because what else is he meant to say? He’d acquired James Bond’s file along with the files of all the other double-oh’s when he took over the position of Quartermaster, but there had been glaring omissions he’d made no time of filling in with a dig around the digital copies. He probably knew more about James Andrew Bond than anyone alive, and certainly more than the man in question knew or likely wanted.

He had considerable guilt over that, not least because he hadn’t been quite so thorough with the rest of the double-ohs.

Only Bond.

Bond who had no next of kin, but had previously listed two: Teresa Bond née Draco (civilian, deceased) and Alec Trevelyan (006, deceased).

Bond, who followed up Q’s neutral statement with, “If it’s alright with you, I’d prefer your name on there.” There’s a pause, not long enough to imply Bond wanted an immediate response, but long enough for Bond to flick his eyes to the mirror and back to gauge the initial reaction. He then deflected with a lighter expression, “I’d hate to have to flat hunt again when the next back-up team takes a dirty shot.”

He’s flattered, he’s perplexed, and he’s primarily concerned with all of the attributes he doesn’t have in common with his predecessors in this hallowed post. He doesn’t say any of that. “If you’re certain,” which is isn’t a question because he knows Bond is always certain when it comes to exposing his weak-spots. He feels the need to say it anyway.

“I am,” Bond nods, and true to form lightens the tone again with a flippant, “None of this ‘Q’ nonsense either; if I’m trusting my worldly possessions to you, however temporarily, I expect verification by birth certificate.”

“You should be so bloody lucky.”

“Now, now, I know you must have used an actual name on the lease for your flat,” the agent chides, and the light familiarity that is common to their interaction normally has made its triumphant return. 

Q smirks, “I have several aliases.”

“I would expect little else. Do they all begin with the letter Q? When I discovered the late M’s actual name it was something of a surprise.”

He can sense the rising mischief, bubbling through the atmosphere of the car; it survives though a mention of ‘the late M’, a distinction Bond makes although the term ‘the new M’ is never used in earshot of the man himself. Mourning is accepted, but change is inevitable, and a codename – as Q is painfully aware – is just that.

Bond knows this just as well, having lived through the tenures of several Qs and perhaps a few Ms now too. Double-oh-seven just wants the power of a name and the distraction from his bearing personal business.

Q estimates they have only ten minutes left of the journey, and wants to give Bond the change of conversation he’s seeking. He takes the bait. “What would be the point of an alias if they were so linked? Really, Bond,” Q raises an eyebrow, “And for your information, my name bears no relation to the codename given to me for national security.”

“Strange, since you look like a Quentin,” the comment is given with a smile, and matches the quickly-hidden one stretched across Q’s lips.

He knows the smile was seen, the agent is observant by habit and necessity, but Q pretends to be disapproving regardless. “Bond.”

“Quinn?”

“Bond,” Q chuckles at the sheer childish enthusiasm of a forty-four year old spy and assassin playing a guessing game. They’re almost at his flat, and he’s disappointed he can’t keep listening to Bond play at the princess to his Rumpelstiltskin.

Bond is only encouraged, “Quincy? No, wait, something with more pedigree: Quartermain!”

“ _James_.” 

That brings a blink from the other man and nothing more, but that’s a startling reaction all the same. Q is embarrassed and amused, and he refuses to let the lapse of propriety - the blasting away of the careful lines they’d drawn silently between them - to become an offense. “Pull in on the right, after those lights,” he points out, smile still in place. Bond takes advantage of a small gap in traffic, which becomes a car-sized gap out of self-preservation, and turns in a modestly-sized and densely-crowded car-park. 

He considers all he knows of double-oh-seven, of James Bond; the, facts he took greedily and now feel unearned, the secrets he cheated out of lines of code. As he reaches for the door-handle to exit the car, he feels the imbalance and as he gathers his satchel in hand, he feels he can pull them onto some even keel.

“It’s not a Q,” he says clearly, offering the challenge, “Do have a little more imagination.” 

Bond’s - James’ - eyes burn to his in the mirror, and Q slips quickly and quietly from the car. The door closes, the car pulls away with uncouth swiftness for such an enclosed space, and Q walks toward the building’s entrance.

When he arrives next morning (his usual driver at his usual hour), he finds a post-it on his desk beside a fresh, hot mug of tea folded into some complex little shape with four legs but no obvious connection to any animal. Except:

\- when Q pulls the origami open, Bond’s scrawl reads, ‘ _A – aardvark_ ’.

Q raises the mug in a silent salute and uses the rim to hide his smile. Challenge accepted.

(Status quo maintained.)


End file.
